News & Articles

Hi-ho, Hi-ho/ It’s off to war we go/ With a hip-hip-hooray/ We’ll send ISIS on its way/ Hi-ho, Hi-ho!
Here we go again – into yet another war in a tumultuous swath of the world involved in centuries-old conflagrations we Euro-centric Americans don’t comprehend and cannot resolve. For a preview of what we’re stepping into in Iraq and Syria, let’s remember Afghanistan.
Beginning in the yesteryear of the Cheney-Bush regime, the promise was that our Afghan excursion would promptly dispatch the Taliban and create a stable democratic government. But it turned out to be both the longest war in American history and a dismal failure on all counts – with more than 2,000 US deaths, nearly twenty thousand of our troops horribly maimed, and over a trillion dollars spent. What have we won?
Far from defeated, the Taliban is again on the offensive – Afghanistan’s elections are a farce, government corruption is flagrant and rampant, the infrastructure we built is already crumbling, there is no national unity, and more than $100 billion of the money we sent for reconstruction and training was simply stolen by the elites and shipped in suitcases to their foreign bank accounts.
The good news is that our nation’s Afghan debacle is scheduled to end this year. The bad news is that it won’t – a contingent of U.S. troops will remain, we will keep paying $5 billion a year to sustain the Afghan army and police, and we’re on the hook for billions more each year to fund that country’s bankrupt government.
So Hi-ho, Hi-ho – off we go to Syria, Iraq, and beyond for what is already being called “a long war.” The tab just for the direct military cost of this latest misadventure will be as much as $22 billion a year. How much good would that money do if we invested it here in our own people?

The scariest thing about political fearmongers is themselves

The bozos and boneheads are loose again, regurgitating their own paranoia and propaganda to advance their doleful agenda of fear.
Take Rep. Duncan Hunter… please! This self-promoting bozo constantly sounds off, louder than a car alarm on the fritz, honking and squealing about some bugaboo he’s dreamed up. In a recent Fox News episode, the far-right California congress critter was in full panic mode, wailing that Islamic State terrorists were entering our country from Mexico: “ISIS is coming across the Southern border,” he panted. “I know that at least 10 ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas,” he breathlessly asserted, adding sternly that while the 10 got caught, “you know there’s going to be dozens more that did not get caught?”
Really? How does he know that? Mr. Fearmongerer won’t say, refusing to reveal his “sources.” Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security calls his claim of an ISIS intrusion from Mexico “Categorically false… not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground.”
Of course, right-wing delusions are impenetrable by mere facts, and Hunter is not about to believe anything said by Homeland officials working in the administration of the man he considers Satan incarnate, Barack Obama. But – oopsy-daisy – Duncan’s delusion got deflated by the Republican-led Department of Public Safety in Texas, which also looked into his foam-at-the-mouth warnings. In an email to state legislators, the agency reported that “DPS does not have any information to confirm [Hunter’s] specific statements.”
It’s embarrassing to learn that boneheads like this are actually taking up space in the United States Congress. No wonder they never get anything done. Duncan shouldn’t be in Congress – he ought to be sitting in a dunking booth at your state fair.
“PolitiFact Texas: Islamic State hasn’t crossed our border,” Austin American Statesman, October 12, 2014.

Time for a trust-busting beer bust

Okay, that’s it – no more Mr. Nice Guy from me. The avarice of corporate power has now turned personal.
It’s about beer, the nourishing nectar of a civilized society. Since my teen years, I’ve done extensive and intensive consumer research on the brewer’s art, from the full array of ales to the most substantial of stouts. I weathered the depressing era when Budweiser, Miller, and a couple of other nationalizers of bland beer drove a diversity of livelier regional brands out of business. But then, I rejoiced in the last decade or so as a flowering of craft and micro brews has spread from city to city, creating an abundance of real gusto and local flavor from coast to coast.
But beware, ye who love local beer – do not just sit on your duffs, doing 12-ounce elbow bends, for here come the Big Brew Bastards again, bigger and more menacing than ever. In fact, they’ve gone global, wielding their predatory marketing clout and political muscle to rule Beer World once and for all. SABMiller, now a South African conglomerate, is trying to take over Heinekin, the world’s third largest beermaker. But Anheuser-Busch, now owned by a Belgian-Brazilian monopolist called InBev, is trying to buy SAB Miller, creating a single beer behemoth that would control a third of all beer sales in the world. In our USofA, the monopolization is worse, with InBev and SABMiller effectively controlling three-fourths of our beer market. If InBev swallows SABMiller, we’re looking at higher prices, lower quality, and fewer choices.
Meanwhile, the red-white-and-blue icon of American beer – Pabst Blue Ribbon –– which dates back to 1844 and itself is a merged conglomerate that owns Colt 45, Old Milwaukee, and Schlitz – is being bought by a Russian brewer. Where is Teddy Roosevelt and his trust-busters when we really need them?
“Monopolizing Beer,” The New York Times, October 8, 2014.
“Pabst Beer Being Sold to Brewer In Russia,” The New York Times, September 19, 2014.